A witch's guide to dealing with wizarding bullshit
by Violilac
Summary: In a magical world, where nearly everything seems possible, two friends are struggling to survive their lives as witches in their 20's in 1990's. Between having a stable job that can pay the bills and surviving the crappy racist wizarding society, can they find a peace of mind?


Hi everyone!

After 10 years being here, I finally got the courage to publish here something of my own. My friend and I had this idea for so long, and now we finally decided to pour it down.

I must warn you - this is a M rated story. There are going to be themes of drug usage, sex, violence, emotional. If you have a problem with any of these, please turn back. This being said, enjoy your reading.

Btw, since I'm not an english native speaker, I'd like to have someone as my beta reader, so if you're interested please let me know! :)

Thank you and please share your thoughts if there is any place for an improvement.

* * *

 **Disclaimer** : everything that is Harry Potter belongs to JKR, except my own characters and plot.

* * *

 **Chapter 1 – Tears for fears**

 _"It's my own design_  
 _It's my own remorse_  
 _Help me to decide_  
 _Help me make the most_

 _Of freedom and of pleasure_  
 _Nothing ever lasts forever_  
 _Everybody wants to rule the world"_

(Everybody want to rule the world, Tears for Fears)

* * *

Her head had hurt. That's the first thing she felt when she opened her eyes. She blinked a few times, trying to sharpen her eyesight that was a bit blurry, not to mention the dizziness that attacked her head. The room felt familiar, but something was off. For a first, she didn't have a sink inside her bedroom, and secondly, she definitely didn't have a shower faucet above her bed – wait, what, shower faucet?

She looked around, trying to understand where was she. The so called "bed" where she was laying was ceramic, cream colored and elliptic. Something was wrong. That's not a bed. She raised her arms up, examining her hands. Glitter and confetti were glued on her.

She moved her hand across her face, groaning irritated. There was something stuck to her right cheek. She pulled a bit and discovered that the sticky something was a bunch of leaves. Why the fuck there are leaves and glitter all over her?

She decided to get up, pulling herself up from where she was laying down, discovering that the "bed" is actually a bathtub.

A bathtub.

"Not again… Why Viola, why?..." she groaned again, rubbing her eyes. She, Viola, went to the sink and opened the faucet, letting the water run. She washed her face and leaned toward the mirror, looking at her reflection.

"You look terrible," the mirror is stating unequivocally, "and you've got to stop crashing here, it's pretty embarrassing, you know? You don't live here and I see you more than I supposed to!"

"Tell me about it." She wrinkled her nose upon seeing her reflection, keep pulling leaves and the rest of the confetti that was caged inside her hair. A young woman aged twenty-five years old, pale skinned with shaped lips and bluish-gray eyes and wild wavy chestnut hair, was frowning at Viola from the cracked half lightened mirror. The makeup she wore the night before was smeared across her face, making her look a lot younger than she really was. _"Like a child who played with her mother's makeup and now she's expecting to be punished,"_ she thought soundlessly.

She pulled her wand from the holster that was on her left thigh under the lavender dress she wore. With a quick cleansing spell, she cleaned her face from the remaining of her makeup.

Much better.

Freshened up, she casted tempus, realizing it is twenty-five minutes after nine o'clock.

She smoothed down the wrinkles on her dress and opened the door, after stepping out of the bathtub room where she slept, and walked silently towards the kitchen.

"Oh, hello to you too," a familiar voice snorted, "what are you doing here?"

Viola tilted her head to the side. On the cream colored sofa set her friend, the apartment's owner, Nanami Kobayashi, rolling down a joint and drinking green tea.

"Hey Nana, I honestly have no idea what happened yesterday that made me crash here… at the tub…" she mumbled the last part to herself.

Nanami smirked.

Seeing Viola waking up at her and her boyfriend's apartment was a normal sight for Nanami. She got up of the sofa, holding in her head the joint that half of it was smoked within minute.

"I hope there's in here only the green stuff. Last time you gave me something weird that made my skin green, and not metaphorically." Viola said, taking gratefully the joint, she inhaled deeply, slowly exhaling the smoke.

"Do you want coffee?" Nanami asked, pulling messily her long hair into a low ponytail.

"Yes, thank you. Twice the sugar."

"Coming up. And it's the green, have no worries." Nanami replies with a smile, going to the kitchen to boil a kettle of water to make coffee. "There's a cake, would you like some?"

Viola opens her mouth to answer but suddenly there is a voice for cackling keys and the door is opening.

"Steve!" Nanami jumped on and kissed her boyfriend that came back home from his job as an auror. "Hello poppet," Steve kisses her back, hugging her. "Viola, hey! What are you doing here so early in the morning?" he asked surprised.

"She woke up inside the bathtub again." Nanami answered his question and took his coat, hanging it on the hook near the entrance.

"I don't know why but I'm not surprised," he snorted, "listen, Viola, do you want some chocolate truffle? I made yesterday a new recipe." He suggests, his blue eyes winking mirthfully.

"The real question here is - are there going to be any side effects? Lately you have the tendency to put inside all those weird medical herbs you grow here. I'm even surprised that the aurors didn't do any kind of a raid and took everything." Viola exhaled smoke.

"Here, chew," Nanami pushed a white chocolate truffle into Viola's mouth while the later was yawning.

"Oomph!"

"Don't talk while you're eating, it's rude and disgusting."

Viola chewed for a bit before rolling her eyes and twisting her face. She ran to the sink and spitted the half-chewed dessert.

"What the fuck did you put in these?!"

"So," Steve replied excitedly, "there's white chocolate, butter cookies, cream, nougat, some firewhiskey-"

"Well, I guess it's not that bad for a firewhiskey-chocolate-truffle…" Viola said hesitantly, drinking water from a cup.

"And the secret ingredient, grounded bezoar!"

"You. You put what?"

"Bezoar." Steve repeated his answer, running between the hall and the kitchen, boiling the kettle again that had cooled down during their talk.

"You are a terrible human being. That was super disgusting and now I have to wash this awful taste from my mouth."

"It'd not that bad, you know, like, you get used to it after a few bites… I tried to make it like those Berty-Botts candy, like having every possible flavor but with a medical value, sorta…" Steve said distractedly, "That's because you have a terrible taste sense, we already agreed upon this." Viola shot at him.

"Steve," Nanami sighed, "why do you have to waste so many resources?" she looked at him defiantly. Steven didn't answer. "Steve…"

He moved his eyes and look at the ceiling, pretending that there is something much more interesting there.

"This is a voice message number fifteen on the voice response: oh sweet Nanami, I'm sorry that I'm wasting AGAIN time and money and resources and trying to make disgusting things that don't realize their potential because I don't do any kind of investigation or consult with you like I'm supposed to do because that's what we agreed upon, and I'm sorry I made Viola throw up that ball and so wasting in another way all the materials, because that's what I usually do-" Nanami answered instead of Steve, using childish ridiculing voice as a tired attempt to put Steve in his place, after the latter broke his unwritten promise to Nanami about experimental cooking in the kitchen.

During Nanami's floating speech, a gray round plump entered the room.

"Minka!" Nanami picked up the plump, Minka, the residential cat – a combination between a wild kneazle and Scottish folded ear, gray with golden eyes. Minka purred and let Nanami caressing her, until something caught the cat's eye and she began wrestling Nanami until she jumped out of her arms, hissing angrily.

Minka sat on the floor, licking herself. Viola bent over to caress the chubby cat, but the latter one ran away from her hand, her eyes catching a sight of a specific object. She jumped onto the sofa, sniffing the black fur blanket that was laying here.

"Oh crap. I should have put it inside the closet." Nanami mumbled to herself, rolling her eyes.

"Huh? What, why?"

"Just wait and see. It's her new thing." Nanami groaned.

Exactly as Nanami finished answering Viola's question, the young women saw the sassy cat standing in a position that is very unambiguous and peep on the blanket. Satisfied with her actions, the cat jumped from the sofa to the floor and rushed to get out of the room.

"God damnit, I just washed that blanket!"

A half an hour later, in which Steve and Nanami cleaned the blanket with the best spells they knew to return it to the previous state, including washing the damn thing, Steve went to the bedroom to sleep a bit and left the two girls by themselves sitting on the couch with a new cup of coffee.

"I think she did it because she wants revenge." Nanami suddenly said.

"What? No way, why would she do that?" Viola laughed.

"Do you remember that I practice my singing, I mean growling at night, and that's why our neighbors think there's a bogart or some ghost here?"

"Mmm yes?"

"So yesterday while I was practicing it, I wandered around the living room and accidentally stepped on her tail. The combination of both must have frightened her…"

Viola snorted, leading Nanami to burst out laughing.

Nanami Kobayashi and Viola Morgenstern became close friends after meeting within their faculty, biology, discovering that they share the same studies, wizarding biology. In other words, Namami studies the first year and stopped in the middle because of health issues and Viola continued to the second year. Because of her health issues, Nanami couldn't work in just any kind of work and she disagreed that only Steve will be the provider. Therefore, Nanami found herself returning to a specific field of work that was not acceptable mentioning. No, Nanami Kobayashi was not a prostitute but a dominatrix queen and there she vented all her frustration from life on all the men and women that came to her for humiliation and torture. Sometimes when Viola was bored she would join Nanami to make some extra cash that was always nice to have inside the wallet.

Viola herself had the kind of work that was unconventional, putting it mildly. Viola's father, Richard "Rex" Morgenstern, was the kind of man you'd be warned about. He was an ex-employee of the mysteries department and a talented info broker. He would sell information to the highest bidder, and even would hand it free for his own amusement and causing chaos. He enjoyed putting people in chaotic or enjoyable situations so he could observe their reactions, and there were many times when he couldn't rely on his wand and had to use muggle weapons and martial arts. Therefore, once Viola reached age fourteen, Richard decided it's the right time to pass his eldest daughter everything he knows, and train her to be his successor when the time comes. Thanks to this unconventional education, Viola was developed to be a person who can determine people's thoughts and predict their reactions with a pretty high accuracy. Additionally to being intelligent and sharp, Viola was cunning and charming. Her roommate and close friend, Laurie Sinclair, used to say that her personality is a delight to the mankind as at the same time it was mocking them.

However, Viola's mother insisted her daughter go and study a profession that she could make a living from, in any emergency case. After that, Viola found herself studying law and graduate and fairly earned her title as a lawyer. Not that she actually did anything with it, she didn't work as a lawyer at the moment. At least mom was happy and when mom happy Viola's happy.

But something was missing.

Viola felt internal unrest and always searched for ways to feel rested and calm, so she dated men, she tried dating women, she went to parties, she started another degree (hello Nanami), she even went to work with Laurie at the lousy office she was stuck at (even though she had her own job). Viola tried her best to make herself as busy as she could, only not to have a single moment with herself when those dark thought float up and destroy herself.

Viola became silent, not focusing her sight at anything.

"Hey, is everything alright?" Nanami waved her hand across Viola's face.

"I just…" she tried to express in words what bothered her without sounding too stupid, "I stumbled upon Matthew yesterday. Where I went to, that party."

Nanami sobered up. "Your first boyfriend, right?"

"Yeah."

Nanami nodded softly. "What about him?"

Viola blinked. "He… he's getting married now." Viola gave Nanami a forlorn smile. "It's so weird. It seems to be like he really loves his fiancé."

"Have you met her?"

"No. He went out with a couple of his friends and I stumbled upon him when I ordered my drink."

"I know Henry has a new girlfriend."

"That jackass."

"A-ha. I even met her when I went to visit my mom at the south."

"Didn't it…"

"Hurt?" Nanami considered her words. "Not exactly. I was already with Steven. There was nothing to compare-"

"I'm not talking about that."

Nanami tilted her head so she could see Viola better. "It's like seeing everything with a retrospective. It's scary."

"Scary is watching ten armed death eaters want to gut you out after you found some embarrassing information on them." Viola ranted.

"And also meeting yourself after ten years," Nanami smiled at her. "How was it seeing Matthew?"

Viola withdrawn into the bad habit of biting her thumb. "I was a really lousy girlfriend, you know?"

"How so?"

"I ditched him a lot, I wouldn't share with him stuff because I couldn't, I wasn't available for shit…"

Nanami raised her eyebrow. "How old were you?"

"Fifteen-sixteen. After my dad brought me into his business of info broking."

"You were very young." Nanami put her cup on the coffee table, and crossed her arms on her knees, putting her chin on them. "a lot of time had passed since."

"Yes, but-" Viola got silenced, and Nanami looked at her with encouragement. "He is so…" Viola shrugged. "Sometimes I feel as if as nothing changed."

"You had other relationships ever since."

Viola remembered Lucas she met at some party at the campus (and Laurie was the one to warn her about not to become involved with a guy like him; smoking himself to bits until he was high and dull sensed, but in the end it was Lucas who told her he was moving over to Liverpool, living with his sister). She remembered Theodore, sweet Theo, who came after a series of experiences and made her believe that everything is possible – she tried her best to be serious, and Theodore was a serious guy (A Slytherin, honest with her; Theodore wasn't scared of her and her job that half the times was dangerous or her mood swings – fishing information with people knowing is not a piece of cake, especially when your father has high expectations from you because you are his legacy.) Theodore was a great guy and a real catch with ambitions and he would definitely go far – and she would have most likely said yes if he'd propose to her as he planned, the hidden ring at the drawer revealed it. They made it almost two and a half years, before they decided to untie the relationship. There were other guys, but she didn't want to commit. Theodore smiled at her softly, ruffled her hair before kissing her temple and said: "I love you, but you're not in love with me," and his words left her burned. Viola wondered how that she does want, but things just don't get along.

She raised her face to look at Nanami. "It never works."

"It never works until we find the one." She sound amused out of herself. "Why do you think it doesn't work?"

Viola corked her fingers joints. She didn't have an answer. "It doesn't work because… it doesn't? Because of the timing? Because of the other side?"

"Because you weren't there for him?"

"M-maybe."

"And?..."

Viola looked at the floor. "I wasn't- we weren't. We weren't what the other one wanted."

Nanami looked at her, the sparkle of her eyes fades into a soft gleam, and they made an impression of a hidden smile. "It's not something that you know at the beginning. When I just started dating Steve – I had no way to know where this thing will grow or if it will even grow. Don't forget that we broke up a couple of times." Nanami looked at Viola direct in the eyes, "But people grow, they change, they evolve. What fits us one moment doesn't after the second. So Steve and I broke up and returned to each other, we drew our conclusions. We learned what we learned on each time." Nanami got silenced. "Love is being learned out of mistakes."

Nanami looked as if she wanted to reach her hands – maybe to press Viola's arm – but she hesitated for a moment. Viola completed the action for her. She sent her arm, her fingers finding Nanami's and their hands touched each other.

"I know your next relationship is going to be amazing," Nanami said, "because you learned from your mistakes, and you know you have things to fix."

Viola leaned her head on the sofa. She definitely knew she had things to fix. She just didn't know how.

* * *

In another place, a young woman stared at nothing. She wasn't focused and didn't pay attention to her rounding. She sat to an oak desk, on her both sides huge piles of documents and other papers, many colorful ink quills and feathers scattered around. There was a background sound, like a never-ending buzz.

 _"Hmm. I wonder when I can go out and have my lunch. I wonder if Viola gave the schmuck our rent… and when the hell will those idiots come to fix our floo…"_

Suddenly a bump was heard and made the young woman jump in her place.

"Laurie! Are you even listening to me?" a screeching voice was heard.

The background voices stopped all at once and the picture became clear to the young woman, Laurie Sinclair.

 _"Ah. Maureen. I'm at work. Great."_ Laurie thought. "What?" she looked confused at the other young woman, Maureen, who sat at the other desk across her.

"Laurie! You don't even listen to me!"

"What were you talking about?"

"Ugh, why does is matter, you didn't even bother to listen to me."

"So repeat it."

"I said that next week Mark and I go to France for the weekend, we rented a room in Château de Gourdon! We are going to celebrate a year and a half, and we wanted to do something romantic and fun-" the other woman, Maureen, started chatting fast and excited. _"More like you making him go around and waste time and money."_ Laurie thought, nodding.

 _"Oh my god, when will she shut the fuck up? I'm getting a migraine because of her drilling on her chateau de crap."_ She thought. Laurie sat to the table, groaned and looked in horror at the pile of parchments scattered on her table, having no choice but to start organizing them in small piles. She had too much of ink quills on the desk, many colors around, _"devil knows how do we have so many,"_ she thought bitterly and put some of them into the drawer, which was already full of them and a great variety of feathers. It was one of those moments she regretted on taking the job of being the personal assistant of her department manager, Magda Bagman.

She closed the drawer and raised her head, seeing her boss's room open. _"Boss. Some boss she is. She's drunk out of her ass all the fucking time."_ The bitter train of thoughts kept running inside her head.

Magda was an oddity. An absurd oddity. Magda was a surprising character because as much as they tried, Viola and Laurie couldn't figure her out until now. Magda Bagman used to be a well-known character in the fashion industry of the wizarding community. Laurie assumed she probably was a kind of a fashion critic, if this job even exists in here. She was a sixty years old woman, Laurie assumed, but looked like a forty years old – ah, the great thing of being a witch is that you don't age fast. Relatively. She was a thin woman (once she declared she hadn't eaten since 1973, and with the number of cigarettes she smokes and the booze that the office always has, it's quite the possible.) Her height was average, but her blonde beehive styled hair added her 10 more centimeters and her high heeled shoes gave 10 more. The final result, with her weird robes with the sparkling lapel pins, made seem to look as if she's a tasteless designed lamp. Magda's self-image is based on 1960s counterculture and the world of fashion and celebrity. She's fixated on self-indulgence and her idea of self-actualization. Magda was desperate to give off the aura of success, wealth and fabulousness. Her outrageous but always expensive wardrobe is one of her ways of doing this, as is the constant renovating of her office.

Every day when Laurie came to the office, 9:00 o'clock sharp, she used to sit and answered letters that were delivered to their department, arranging parchments and etcetera – doing everything that Magda was supposed to do. If you observe the clock, you'd be able to discover that on a good day Magda would do the honor of entering the office only after three hours. Usually it would be a dramatic enter, she'd be wearing huge sunglasses and would throw her burgundy velvet colored robe, half yelling on Laurie that she needs a lighter to light up five cigarettes that were stuffed between her lips, while ranting about the goddamn order not to smoke inside the ministry's hall and cursing the minister. Her own pet crow, fucking Clarence, would screech and curse himself.

After Laurie would lighten up her cigarettes with her wand, Magda would announce "Don't pass me any calls or letters. If anybody's looking for me – I'm not here" and slam the door of her room that couldn't be closed very well due to Magda's slams - the wooden door was cracked at the edges. If you peered beyond the small cracked, you could have seen Magda applying nail polish – usually neonic horrendous colors – or solving Swedish crosswords puzzle on the Daily Prophet. Furthermore, you could have heard yelling and vases being shattered.

Again, that was on a good day.

On bad days, she'd be missing from the office without notice, and every possible catastrophe would land on Laurie's shoulders that already felt lost and helpless. At the same time, Magda would send Laurie a howler (goddamned shrieking letters) that she demands that two packets of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka will wait for her on her desk on the very next morning, and that she wouldn't dare let that ugly bitchy toad without the fashion sense, Dolores Ambridge, into their office. Ambridge tried many times snooping around the department, and it always ended with Magda throwing a bottle of vodka of the previous one, when she'd threat on Magda she will make sure to close their office.

Laurie couldn't figure out why it has yet to happen, the department was small and negligible and there is a great doubt that anyone had heard about it.

Therefore, Laurie was loaded with work – not hers, stuck with answering letters – not hers, and still had a huge stack of essays to read, for university students that paid her to translate or write from scratch a full seminar and it was due tomorrow morning. She felt like crying.

In addition to all of that circus, there's the new girl who works with Laurie. Maureen Tuft.

Maureen joined the office around two or three months ago, after Laurie begged Magda that a part time worker (Viola) is not enough help with all the work she has. (She didn't understand how such a small department make such a huge work. Never mind.) Maureen was a girl with an average looks, a Plain Jane, but with a huge ego as if she's the queen herself and she had the self-image that she's much more greater than she really was – an example for that is the none stopping chatting about herself to Laurie (she claimed to have modeled to Witch Weekly, a thing that wasn't making any sense to Laurie, because Maureen's face were… in a mild way to put it, plain; she had small brownish eyes, round face, small upturned nose, painted red lips that looked more like a screaming line and dimple less (quite on the contrary). To summary, she wasn't a very smart woman, a pure blooded from unimportant family and not a very interesting person.

At that moment, Maureen decided to shake Laurie out of her self-pitying. She moved her ginger colored hair (a tasteless shade if you ask Laurie) out of her face, and sat on Laurie's desk, fixing her huge pearl earrings on her ears. "So, what do you say?"

Laurie glared at her tiredly. "Yeah, sure, sounds good."

"I know, right? It'll be amazing! We're going to have wine and a cheese palette – ooh, I also heard that there are unicorns nearby, and Mark promised me I could pet one-"

"Cool." Laurie stretched on her chair. "I wonder if Magda remembers that Ludo's supposed to visit today."

Maureen blinked. "Who?"

"Ludo Bagman, her nephew. The one how runs the international games and quidditch and crap, all that bullshit like the triwizard tournament games."

"Oh. Him."

"Yup. Him."

What not many people knew, thanks to Magda's effort to hide it, was the fact that Ludo Bagman was her nephew. To say that their relations were good was like saying that water and oil can be mixed. The woman simply despised her nephew with the claim that he's an embarrassment her family name and that he's the result of a broken condom and her sister's idiocy.

"It's going to be ugly." Maureen said, examining her finger nails.

"I'm planning my lunch break on that period."

"I'm with you."

"No, no, no, no, mate! I don't even get out of bed and piss for that kinda money!" they heard Magda yell, probably wrote a new howler for the current scapegoat. They swallowed, looking at the door fearing a bit.

"I'm not going to clean that crow's shit if he's going to shit." Maureen stated. Laurie sighed, not surprised at all. "I don't understand what's the problem to cast a simple scourgify." She mumbled to herself.

 _"I wonder if it was a smart idea leaving the radio and working here."_ Laurie thought, straightening the parchment Maureen had sat on.

Before she came to work at Magda's, Laurie worked as a radio broadcaster at a small wizarding radio station, not the Wizarding Waving Net. She had her own show everyday afternoon, and sometimes even on the evenings. Her show was about music and sometimes she'd talked about some conspiracies she heard about. She really loved her job, she gave her soul to it – tried to play other less known wizarding bands, and among her reasons was the will to promote the music but mostly because she hated The Weird Sisters ("disgusting horrendous whiney pop-punk with wails and lame lyric, Jesus Christ, how can anyone like that crap?") and listening to Celestina Warbeck would make her want to barf. Sadly, she didn't have many listeners – not to her show and not to the radio.

The main issue, beside the lack of listeners, was that Laurie couldn't pay the bills if she kept working at the radio. Most of the station was built with the help of volunteers, and the ones that actually got paid, received a ridiculously small amount. Desperate with bills to pay, Laurie had to part ways with the radio and change her root into the magical ministry – and this is how she came to Magda.

So far Laurie wasn't satisfied with the place her life had led her on. She's twenty-five going twenty-six years old, looks overall nicely – dark blue eyes, light blonde hair (now she has it pixie cut styled and her parents hate it, like everything else she likes), she's tall with a nice figure (some would say a fair hour glass shaped). But who cares for looks, she graduated Hogwarts with high NEWTs, graduated her journalism degree and she wanted to be a journalist – to discover and interview interesting people, bring important news to the public – instead, she found herself stuck inside a terrible nook inside a stupid unnecessary department that no one seems to know about.

Working at the magical ministry was the best she could get as a job for someone with the same class as her – a muggleborn. No matter how many times she will submit a candidacy to the Daily Prophet, for every kind of a job there, she will be turned down because the job is already manned. It's a lie, she knows it, because every time they accept someone else and privileged – a thing she is not.

It was frustrating her, the racism that seems to be everywhere, and sometimes she just want to scream and cry and flip the fucking tables because she can't progress and work in a nice good job that pays nicely.

It is so unfair.


End file.
